Grave Concern (37 page)

Now Kate noticed she had not left Gronk behind. Like one of those levitating monks one saw years ago yo-yoing fuzzily up and down on TV, he would squawk and flap up off the ground, land again and once more bounce off in a flurry of wishful flight. Unlike the monks, though, Gronk stopped now and then and marched in a circle until Kate caught up. Then the whole routine would begin again. This time, rising and dropping, Gronk veered off to the right.

“Gronk,” he clearly said. Kate looked up.

“Yah, same to you, buddy.”

Gronk flapped still farther along his chosen trajectory. “Gronk.”

“Oh I get it,” she said. “Follow the leader, is it?” More intrigued than she let on, Kate changed direction and followed the bird. Gronk flapped again, leading her completely astray.

“Gronk.”

“Okay, okay, I'm coming.”

“Gronk, gronk.”

What harm could it do?

“Just a minute, hold your horses.” Kate lay down her grave-keeping implements by the stone of her Grade 8 history teacher named, aptly enough, Cecil Graves.

Gronk led Kate to the edge of the cemetery and down into the bush — toward J.P.'s grave! Kate's stomach was a shaken snow globe, acid and anxious. She had a distinct feeling this bird knew as much as she, or more, about this place. Ignoring the nausea as far as possible, Kate plodded on, following where the raven led.

Gronk led them straight to the true grave of J.P. — still missing its marking stake. Gronk didn't seem the least bothered by this, sure of his destination. Kate glanced over toward the spot she'd led John Marcotte to believe was his son's burial place. Gronk continued to strut and preen atop J.P.'s grave, but Kate was no longer paying attention. She stared across at the false grave. Was she seeing what she thought she was seeing? Was the ground around the picket a darker colour, overturned, torn up? Leaving Gronk to his chicken dance, Kate wandered over.

No, she was not mistaken. All around the picket (now on a drunken slant) the ground was unnaturally disturbed.
Someone had been digging
.

August, and already the silver maples showed the first tinges of red. Nicholas called Kate on his cell; he was on the road, he said, on his way back down to T.O. — for good. The dead cougar had been shipped off to the government labs for a proper necropsy, which would hopefully yield some solid information into which they could sink their teeth. He apologized again for the abuse of her sink, and thanked her for a nebulous sort of something. Kate wasn't sure, exactly, to what he referred (the cell was cutting out), but she assured him it was nothing, any time. She told him she hoped he would be back some day, merrily tracking cougar cubs through the undergrowth.

“And say hi to Kathleen for me,” Kate said.

“I certainly will,” Link replied, and hung up.

Suddenly bereft, Kate phoned Mary. “Hey there, want to go for a walk? I'll drive to your place.”

It was a long way from Mary's house west of town to the graveyard farther west, but then, in a place the size of Pine Rapids, “long” was relative. It could be walked in under an hour. On the way, Mary told Kate stories of her own hometown in Newfoundland, stories rekindled and revised on her recent trip. When Kate showed suitable amusement, Mary prolonged the fun by explaining how Eamon continued to take great pleasure in telling everyone about Kate's party, disabusing them of their notion that Ontarians were boring. Of course, the party got wilder with every telling. Mary could hardly wait to hear more about it a year or so on.

For her part, Kate told Mary about the mysteries that had kept her busy while Mary was gone. The day out with Adele Niedmeyer, with its attendant suspicions. Buck Miller's shooting, of course, and the weird, unfinished feeling it had imparted. Nicholas's fickle, mysterious behaviour around the cougar issue, though perhaps that could now be considered resolved. The moving of the grave marker, the subsequent diggings. And strangest of all, the chatty raven who had apparently learned his English at a casino. She deliberately left out mention of Extraordinary Wayne.

Mary listened to it all, and pronounced herself baffled. “Dunno, Kate. I missed ‘Diagnosis of Crones and Corvids' at med school.”

As they walked along the endless gravel road where Mary lived, her word, “crones,” rattled around Kate's head. A word little used anymore, but it struck some kind of chord. “What exactly is a
crone
, Mary?” she asked now. “I mean I know basically what it means, but how would
you
define it?”

“I dunno, dear — used to hear it now and then back on the Rock. An old lady with wisdom of some kind. Kind of outside the regular realm of folks, eh? Menopause required. Someone who's been there, done that, and seen it all — all at once. Although I think people mostly use it in a more negative sense, as in
an ugly old cow no one wants anything to do with
.”

Kate stopped dead in her tracks. “Mary! That's it. You're a genius!”

“Dear, I wish you would tell the hospital administration that. They generally prefer the term ‘difficult.' ”

And Kate told Mary an old story of her own: about the summer fair and Madama Della, the fortune teller.

“You know, she told me I'd marry a tall, dark stranger,” said Kate in a bright, earnest tone.

“No —
really
?” Mary said. “I'm amazed, dear. Shocked.”

“But Mary, think about it. Who am I seeing?”

“Uh …”

“Leonard, Mary,
Leonard
. And he's talking marriage! Well, sort of. Not really. If he ever gets back from the ends of the earth. At any rate,
he wants me to meet his parents
.”

“Marriage? You don't say.” Kate could see Mary striving mightily not to show shock. “Okay, so he's, uh, not so tall and dark,” Mary continued, obviously unconvinced on the prophecy front. “His hair's dark, I'll give you that. Would you call him a
stranger
?”

“Well, he was until I got to know him.”

“Isn't everyone, dear, if it comes to that?”

“Okay, okay. Maybe all that was a red herring. But Mary, I'm serious about what I'm going to say next.”

“Uh huh,” Mary looked skeptical.

“I've been going over her name, ‘Madama Della,' in my mind. Something about the rhythm of our walking:
Madama Della, Madama Della.
It turned into
Madame Adella, Madame Adella
. Adella, Adella, Adele. Would you say, Mary, that ‘Madama Della' could have been a gypsified version of ‘Adele'? She took the ‘A' off the front of her name and stuck it onto Madame to make Madama, then slightly altered the rest? Whaddya think?”

Mary, more impressed with this line of inquiry than the talk of tall, dark strangers, nodded knowingly.

Fired up now, Kate went on. “When you said ‘crone,' Madama Della hopped straight to mind, even though I only saw her once, a thousand years ago. And then my mind just took a beeline to Adele Niedmeyer, the only other arguably crone-like person I ever knew. Other than you, of course.”

“Thank you, dear,” said Mary. “I'm flattered.”

“So work with me on this,” Kate said. “Why would Adele never have said a thing that whole afternoon I spent with her about our encounter when I was a girl?”

“Kate, dear, she's over ninety! You can't expect her to remember something so long ago! And, dare I say it, trivial.”

“Trivial! Yeah, okay, but at the time she asked me all this stuff about when I was born, and the colour of my eyes, and if I liked school. And my
name
. So
she
knew who
I
was: the daughter of her once best friend. But I didn't recognize
her
. I mean, I was so young, and she was so wrapped up in scarves and skirts …”

“She was filling in time, dear. Likely asked everyone the same. To give her some clues as to what to predict.”

Kate grew pensive. “And all those years, I never thought it strange that a town like Pine Rapids could snag an exotic gypsy for a summer fair. I mean, really, where are you going to find a gypsy, up here? Local volunteers! And get this, Mary. Adele told me that afternoon that she'd always
loved
circuses and fairs. So that makes sense. A way for a housewife and mother to get involved.” Kate sat back and laughed. “When I think of the thick accent she put on. Of course, being young and naïve, I thought it was for real.”

“No doubt cheesy as sin,” Mary said.

“No doubt,” Kate agreed.

They walked along in silence for a while. They crossed the highway, quiet on a summer afternoon, and stopped in at McPhail's Dairy for a cold milkshake before continuing on their way. Fortified for another twenty minutes' walk in the heat, the two women ambled along dusty laneways and gravel roads, like schoolgirls on holiday.

Kate turned to Mary. “You're a good friend, Mary. I'm sure you have better things to do on your day off.”

Mary squeezed Mary's shoulder. “Yes dear, but nothing so entertaining as listening to you.”

By the time they set foot on Cemetery Road, the sky had clouded over. Growing tired of putting one foot ahead of the other, Kate thought of a rather nice old expression for a woman who was pregnant:
great with child
. The sky now, you could say, was great with rain. The air had grown dense, explosive. She led Mary into the bush toward J.P.'s grave.

“So you know in theory where we're going,” Kate said. “But still, you're not going to believe your eyes.”

Mary cast her eye over the scene: the displaced picket and, just as Kate had claimed, obvious diggings. Gronk hunched, like an evil thought, on a branch nearby. “Kate, look! We've got company.”

At Mary's words, he seemed to wake up. He hopped to the end of the branch and flew off as though to lift the sky on aching wings. Kate was amazed. She had never actually seen Gronk fly more than a few feet, assuming old age or chronic injury kept him close to ground. She felt rather sluggish, herself, and the dank humidity had left her hair in strings.

Just as the first thunder rumbled in the distance, Gronk returned to the pine, this time way up top. And threw a croak out to the world. And another. Gronk repeated his throaty musings for all to hear, while Kate strained to understand what the hell he was on about.

By some magic Kate would never understand, Nicholas's cell number was stored on her phone. She dialed it now, watching Mary watch a rerun of
Friends
they had, between them, seen at least eight times before. They were drying out after a thorough soaking from the storm.

“What is it about this stupid show that is so addictive?” Mary said, swirling Kate's Carmenère in her glass.

But she never got her answer, because just then, Nicholas picked up.

“Nicholas? Kate. Listen, I'm sorry to bug you at work or whatever, but Mary and I have been ruminating.”

Mary laughed as Kate held the receiver away from her ear and a male voice ranted unintelligible syllables into the telesphere.

“I know, I know,” said Kate, gingerly bringing the phone closer. “But here's the thing. No, wait. Nicholas! Hang on.
Listen
for a sec. You know that bird J.P. had? The raven. Yeah. Was it very old?”

More unintelligible invective. When the decibel level diminished, Kate reapplied the phone to her ear. All Mary could hear now was Kate's side.

“Okay, so how long do they generally live?”

“Well, I'll eat my hat. So, it's conceivable he could still be around? ”

“Yeah, well now he answers to ‘Gronk.' ”

“Yeah! Yeah! That's the one.”

“He's a
she
?”

“Anyway, Hille Hatter — you know, married to Ron Whatshisname — was under the impression J.P. went in to rescue it.
Her
. Have you ever heard anything like that?”

“You're kidding me. Oh, man.” Kate dropped the phone against her thigh, dropped chin to chest and momentarily closed her eyes.